22 Jan
2003
22 Jan
'03
5:02 a.m.
On Wednesday, January 22, 2003, at 08:07 AM, Arno Kletzander wrote:
If in fact the same die was used in both components,
then it's only the
plastic (which is impenetrable to the commonly-used ultra-violet
light) that
prevents the OTP variant from being erased and reprogrammed.
However, there are kinds of radiation similar to light which *will*
penetrate the plastic housing...you see where this goes? Will the
memory be erased
when you, say, X-ray the OTP component, will it stay unaffected, or is
the
thing just going to die?
According to this:
http://www.jmargolin.com/patents/eprom.htm
it should be possible to erase an EPROM using X-rays, but there's a
possibility of the crystalline structure of the silicon being disrupted
in the process. It's an interesting read.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Wear whatever you want...Just don't be surprised
St. Petersburg, FL if you wind up with a blow-gun dart in your
prosthetic boobies." -Kurt Huhn